Generally speaking, the text-to-speech (TTS) system user experience is influenced by a correct pronunciation of a product name, its location and description, abbreviations, units of measurement, and other raw data entered into the TTS system. To improve the user experience, an option should exist for the user to mark and correct the mispronounced words and phrases, followed by an instant incorporation of the changes back into the workflow.
Standard means for a TTS pronunciation correction lack an ability to instantly incorporate the changes suggested by the user. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 9,275,633 by Cath et al., the pronunciation corrections provided by users are then stored in a database for further analysis and approval, and do not provide an immediate pronunciation update. In U.S. Pat. No. 6,363,342 by Shaw et al., the editing tool limits the corrections to the words marked by the user, and does not extrapolate the user input to similar words. Additionally, no instant pronunciation update is provided in response to the user feedback as well. Similarly, in U.S. Pat. No. 8,666,746 by Bangalore et al., no on-the-fly TTS system correction is offered after the user input. In U.S. App. No. 20,070,016,421 by Nurminen et al., the invention does not offer a way to immediately incorporate the corrected entry back into the workflow either.
Therefore, a need exists for a streamlined method of on-the-fly user interaction with a TTS system, which can provide convenient means of pronunciation correction combined with an instant feedback in response to the user entry. Such feedback can include an updated pronunciation of the corrected entry, and may be further extrapolated to the pronunciation of similar entries.